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When it premiered in Spain, only 9,000 saw it. But the creepy movie about necrophilia has been viewed illegally six million times in the Philippines.

Director Hèctor Hernández Vicens' first feature film The Corpse of Anna Fritz has only been viewed 9,000 times, making just €36,000 in Spain since its premiere in October, according to entertainment magazine Fotogramas.

But in the Philippines, the creepy thriller is raking in millions of views - all illegally.

The film tells the disturbing story of three young friends who decide to be the last people to have sex with a dead, beautiful actress named Anna Fritz inside of a morgue.

WARNING: The following tráiler shows scenes some may find offensive

Fotogramas estimated that the movie has been viewed between 5 million to 7 million times in the Philippines, but the filmmakers are not making any money there.

The movie crew told reporters that they started seeing dozens of messages posted on the film's unofficial Facebook page, written in Tagalog, the most widely spoken language in the Philippines, and other local languages.

They asked their distribution company whether the film was being sold in the Philippines, and were told that it was not. Soon they found that a pirated copy was circulating around Facebook.

One of the actors and producers on the film, Bernat Saumell, has said that the movie team launched legal action to try to stop the illegal distribution of the film.

They have managed to get YouTube to pull a version posted on their site and have hired lawyers

They also want to screen the film in the Pacific island country and promote the movie there.

The movie has been shown at a number of film festivals around the world, including South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and the London Film Festival.

That a film with such distasteful subject matter should prove such a hit in the Philippines is hardly surprising.